_Con._ Not till you hear of your good fortune, my dear. You have attracted, in one moment, what hundreds of your sex have twinkled their eyes for whole years in vain--my notice. I will bring you into the world myself; your fortune’s made. _Soph_. Sir, this kind of conversation is new to me. I insist upon passing. ***** _Con_. When we fellows of superior class show ourselves, the women throw themselves at us; pick and choose is the way; and happy is she we deign to catch in our arms. [Attempts to lay hold of her. _Soph_. (Bursts into tears.) Unheard of assurance! What do you seer in me to encourage such insolence? or is it the very baseness of you nature that insults a woman because she has no protection? _Tru_. (Advances between them.) Protection is not so distant as you imagined. --C. Dibdin, Jun. Lotte’s heart, out of its own sore struggles, had been schooled to compassionate deeply and tenderly the afflictions and trials of others, especially of her own sex. She had no thought, in taking to her bosom this poor heart-crushed wanderer, of the responsibility she was entailing upon herself. The cold suggestions of worldly prudence, and the heartless promptings of mincing propriety had no trumpet-tongued voice loud enough to reach her ear. She saw only that one, lonely, helpless, pressed, as she had been, ruthlessly by a mad despair upon the brink of an awful abyss, would spring into its unfathomable depths, if she stretched not forth her hand to hold her back. She paused not in her impulse to save this young, forlorn, desolate woman--to ask in what, why, or how she had erred, or to reflect whether she was destitute, even though elegantly dressed, and, if so, that her noble purpose of restoring her, if possible, back to the sunny paths of ife, could only be accomplished by many a personal sacrifice. No; not one selfish thought mingled itself with her sympathy; her own initiation into suffering had stimulated her, unbiassed by any personal consideration, to rescue one placed in a like peril to that in which she had stood, and she was prepared to conduct the young stranger to her own abode without further inquiry--without stipulation or condition. “Imprudent! rash! inconsiderate!” cries rigid Decorum--“Yet a blessed sample of pure human compassion!” exclaims old single-hearted, but, alas! too often abused Philanthropy.